Jimmy Kimmel and the Power of Public Pressure

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, and I'm David Remnick. Last week, late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel returned to the airwaves, well at least some of them, and he came back to record high ratings in what's being hailed as a victory for advocates of the First Amendment. Kimmel had been temporarily sidelined by ABC. They suspended him for a joke that he made about the MAGA movement that many deemed insensitive in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. President Trump has taken a personal interest in this dispute and has threatened legal action against the network for defying his wishes by putting Kimmel's show back on the air.

The most recent episode of the New Yorkers podcast, The Political Scene, looks at the broader implications of this free speech fight. Their guest is Hardy Merriman, an expert on civil resistance, and the conversation revolves around whether the Kimmel showdown with the White House will spark a wider movement against authoritarianism. Today on the show, new dominoes falling in the assault on democracy. Just in the last few days we've seen the indictment of a former FBI director, James Comey, and a directive from the Justice Department to investigate and perhaps prosecute George Soros's philanthropic vehicle, the Open Society Foundations.

There has also, however, been a surprising bit of news, what we might call the fall and rise of Jimmy Kimmel, his abrupt return to late-night television after his suspension last week, delivered something very rare in today's politics, a moment in which it felt as if perhaps some complicated combination of public resistance actually turned the tide, and we're going to look into that today. To help us answer these questions, we're turning to Hardy Merriman. He's an expert on the history and practice of civil resistance. He's written extensively over the years about authoritarianism and the forces that can chip away at its power.

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